The Hall of Sandwiches

Much ado has been made of the recent Baseball Hall of Fame election results, mostly because we, as humans, like to organize things and people and ideas into categories. With the hall of fame (I'd rather not capitalize it anymore), the Baseball writers association of America (again, capitalization irregularities are intended) gets to organize players and managers and executives and extraordinary peanut slingers into two separate drawers: fame-worthy and not fame-worthy. There's a third drawer as voted on by the Veterans Committee but that's the junk drawer: full of twist-ties and Phil Rizzutos. But as Rich Lederer and Buster Olney can tell you, folks just don't agree on who deserves to get in the fame-worthy drawer with the silicone spatula and the Mel Otts. Between Lederer and Olney. one of them is right about Jim Rice and one of them is wrong. We get it. The question, however, isn't "Does Jim Rice belong in the hall of fame?" but rather, who are these people who get to decide?

Baseball writers are a curmudgeonly bunch, and I don't blame them. They exist in the exclusive universe of professional baseball, and do it all without needing athletic talent or strategic knowledge of the sport (and in some cases, without actual writing skills). Don't get me wrong, some baseball writers are wise and thoughtful human beings, but as a whole, they should not be the ones deciding the value of baseball players' careers. Why? Because for the most part, they are narrow-focused fans just like you and I. As beat writers, they are too intertwined with the lives of players, for better or for worse. Their opinions are subjective.

Hey! I'm breaking new ground here! "Sportswriters are subjective with their opinions"! Gimme the Pulitzer for Blatantly Obvious Sports Analysis.

So now we are presented with two problems: who should vote for the hall of fame, and for what should baseball writers be allowed to vote? Here's a hilarious list to answer the latter:

Hall of Sandwiches

Most Valuable Stretchy Fabric

Cookie of the Year

Get it? They're fat! Ha, ha. As for the first question, I believe the only voters for the hall of fame should be an advanced race of cyborg HatGuys. It can't be much worse than what we've got now.